


Crust

by aderyn



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Brotherly Affection, Childhood, Conversations, Crows, Family, Food, Love, Mates, Phone calls from the dead, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-28 16:48:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/994239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A crow eating a sandwich.<br/>Sherlock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crust

**Author's Note:**

> For [quarryquest](http://quarryquest.livejournal.com/), crows, sandwiches, sympathy, and the British government.
> 
> Kind of a companion for [Synonymous Angels](http://archiveofourown.org/works/930817).

 

Mycroft Holmes has seen a crow eating a sandwich before. Noticed, even. They’re smart, the corvids, with knowing eyes and the knowing, yes, of whether a sandwich is theirs for the eating.

Now though, the carrion crow beaking a bench-abandoned sausage roll outside this seat of power makes him think of his brother, unaccountably, though Sherlock and crows isn’t difficult to parse.

Little brother handed to him cawing. That he remembers. January and blue ice. The odd open eyes of a newborn under dark down.  _No-one_ , between hitches, _should ever love me_.

Not a premonition then, when Sherlock calls from the country of the dead.

“Slow down,” Mycroft says, shoulders the phone. “How much blood?”

A sucked breath. Sherlock names him a less-than-critical amount, borderline, and the room’s clean and he’s alright, but John, _is John_ …

“He’s fine,” Mycroft says, thinks of the black beak, the bobbing foodcall to the family.

“He’s not,” Sherlock says, “safe.”

“We’ll …”

“It’s all for him.”

_You know that._

_(Once he saw John take his brother’s hand, in a November gale under a wild sky. They might have taken off right then.)_

“Put out the cigarette,” Mycroft says. “Sleep.”

Doesn’t speak what’s not an advantage.

“Easy for you to say,” Sherlock tells him anyway.

“Sherlock …”

A claw-click in the disconnect.

_Eat._

_Don’t die for love._

_Black bird, little brother._

**Author's Note:**

> [The Social Structure of New Caledonian Crows](http://academic.reed.edu/biology/courses/BIO342/2010_syllabus/Study_questions/Nov22/KTQL.pdf)   
> [ Crows, eye contact, intention, and hierarchy](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eth.12064/abstract;jsessionid=C2DE821F2AA071C7BCB6C77C56CBAA2A.d04t02)
> 
> [Cardiff crow from quarryquest](https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/b01Fu6GoQ0N0Zi7RvgirY9MTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=directlink)
> 
>  [Quarryquest, crow at West Smithfield Ambulance Station](https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/qhzQ5K-E1vKG1-4m_NAP09MTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=directlink)
> 
>    
> [Quarryquest, crow and sandwich, Pathology building](https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/YPP8BiSvaVlny_yaPaTKk9MTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=directlink)


End file.
